The invention relates to a software simulator and appertaining method of using the software simulator for the Hanging Protocol.
The Hanging Protocol is a supplement of the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard and contains information about physicians' viewing preferences related to display capabilities for image information and other data. The Hanging Protocol is designed to be vendor neutral and permit interchangeability across product lines and implementation formats. It supports multi-modality and a full ability to utilize current display modes. It is extensible and flexible, but is not always easy to implement and retrofit, and is dependent upon reliable image attributes.
The goal for physicians and other users is to be able to conveniently define their preferred methods of presentation and interaction for different types of viewing circumstances and to have images sets automatically hung (i.e., arranged for display) according to the user's preferences on display systems of similar capabilities. The Hanging Protocol defines the display order of multiple multimedia elements, e.g., text, image and other data. The main goal is to facilitate the automatic and consistent hanging of images according to a definition provided by the users.
At present, there is no simulation that allows a user to preview and/or test various hardware configurations without actually having the target hardware.